WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US lawmakers held a hearing on Monday to discuss the possibility of granting reparations to African-American descendants of slaves, a sensitive issue in the United States, which is experiencing an upsurge in ethnic tensions.
The bill, called "HR40", calls for the formation of a parliamentary committee to study the slavery and discrimination of slaves under Jim Crow laws, which forced black and white segregation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This bill has been submitted on numerous occasions since 1989 without the opportunity to put it to the vote.
But this year marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first batch of African slaves to American territory. The Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives held a hearing on "Genting Day", or the day that the last group of slaves in Texas was liberated in 1865.
"The (HR40) is the long-awaited response of states," said Texas District Attorney Sheila Jackson Lee, who introduced the bill. The African-American community, which accounts for 13.4 percent of the population, has the right to some of the wealth that their forefathers helped achieve, she said. "The committee will make recommendations on appropriate ways to educate American public opinion about its findings and how to properly address these findings," said Steve Cohen, a Democrat who sponsors the bill.
The African-American writer, Coleman Hughes, considered that blacks do not need "another apology."
"We need safer neighborhoods and better schools, we need a criminal justice system with less sanctions, we need affordable health care, and none of these things can be achieved through compensation for slavery," he said. According to the Web site Federal Safety Net, which monitors poverty and welfare programs, 21.2 percent of African Americans suffered poverty in 2017, compared to 8.7 percent of the white population.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who decides on projects presented to the council, ruled out the idea of paying compensation for slavery.
"I do not think it's a good idea to give compensation for something that happened 150 years ago, and now none of us are responsible," said McConnell, a Republican senator from Kentucky, a former slave state.
Sen. Corrie Boker, an African American who is running for the Democratic nomination for the presidential election in 2020, said McConnell's remarks showed "a great deal of ignorance."
- African-American writer Coleman Hughes:
"We need safer neighborhoods and better schools, we need to
Criminal justice system less sanctions, we need care
Healthy affordable prices, can not achieve any
Of these things through compensation for slavery ».